Six servos, an Arduino board, and open-source languages teach a lamp to play.

Shanshan Zhou had a longtime childhood fantasy: she dreamt her otherwise static belongings would suddenly begin to play with her—she used to pretend they were alive. So when it came time to do a project for her Physical Computing class at Victoria University-Wellington, she took the opportunity to turn an inanimate object into “living art.” Zhou gave character to an object which, despite its lack of human features, could now connect with people.

Her joint project with an industrial design student, Adam Ben-Dror, and a conceptual artist, Joss Dogget, resulted in a playful moving desk lamp the team calls "Pinokio." When turned on, the lamp is programmed to look around for human faces using a camera embedded where the bulb would normally be. Once it finds a face, the lamp can follow it back and forth; if the face hides behind hands or a notebook, the lamp will continue to look around curiously, trying to peek over the top to see the person again. If the lamp's gaze wanders, a couple of handclaps will draw its attention.

Pinokio | Lamp

The closest cultural reference for Pinokio is probably the only famous anthropomorphic desk lamp in history: Luxo Jr., from the eponymous Pixar short released in 1986 (it lives on in that company’s title card). While Pinokio can’t hop or play with a ball, the way it glances around and cranes its neck do show similarities to Luxo Jr. and its parent lamp, Luxo.

While the Pinokio team acknowledges the similarities to Pixar’s animated lamps, they didn’t realize them until the project was near complete. Ben-Dror notes they could have chosen a different object to bring to life, “but the anglepoise lamp by George Carwardine just lends itself so nicely to being animated.” To bring the lamp to life, Ben-Dror used four digital manufacturing processes to create the parts for Pinokio: laser cutting, CNC lathing, 3D printing, and CNC water-jet cutting.

A sketch of the algorithm Zhou used to program the lamp.

“I think Pinokio down in its soul was a naughty baby or dog,” Zhou says when I ask about the lamp's inspiration. In the demonstration video, the narrative text notes that Pinokio is “naive,” easily fooled during a game of peek-a-boo. Dogget notes that because of the way Pinokio moves and responds to human faces and interactions, the experience “compares so greatly to interacting with a real personality, interacting with a real animal, rather than a semi-intelligent toy.”

Zhou tells Ars that Pinokio's most animalistic motion is when the lamp is looking around, searching for a human face with which to connect. Six servos built into the lamp are used to move it, and the code that dictates its movement is procedural rather than prescriptive. With each glance, the lamp chooses a new random direction to look in. Zhou used the open source language Processing to program the lamp and the hardware prototyping system Arduino to communicate between the code and the servos. To make the lamp track human faces with its camera, the team used the OpenCV library for Processing.

In one of the last sections, the function flickSwitch performs a behavior shown in the video. If a person attempts to turn the lamp off, the lamp will bend itself down and flip its own power switch back to the "on" position. The lamp also has “introvert” and “extrovert” moods, so when it’s feeling social, it will stretch to its full length, getting close to the human in front of it as if to try to see what the person is doing. (In introvert mood, the lamp keeps to itself accordingly.) The team notes on its website that it initially intended to use a notebook (like the one in the video above) to trigger the lamp’s curious extroverted mode, but the servo controlling the full extension of the lamp’s body was broken and the code used to control the reaction to the book was not efficient enough.

Ben-Dror notes that the lamp could have serious applications; for instance, it could “[follow] your hands around on the page, to shine light wherever you are working.” But the broader aim of Pinokio isn’t just to create something that moves but something that emotionally engages people. As Zhou put it on the project website, “I do believe with future robots or human-machine-interaction, we should look into our natural interaction with something that is alive, such as animals and children.”

The closest cultural reference for Pinokio is probably the only famous anthropomorphic desk lamp in history: Luxo Jr., from the eponymous Pixar short released in 1986 (it lives on in that company’s title card).

I'm pretty sure that I watched John Madden sketch that same algorithm. "And then, BOOM!, the lamps cuts back, WHAM!, like that, see, and turns itself back on and the human just, WHOOSH!, slides right by - a complete miss! That's just a great play and a good call!"

I think the idea of inanimate objects expressing human/animalistic characteristics is quite fascinating. I was immediately engaged with the lamp when it activated in the video and found myself smiling as it expressed a 'desire' to stay on.

I would pay good money to have a lamp or other object keep me company late at night while I do random work at the computer.

The closest cultural reference for Pinokio is probably the only famous anthropomorphic desk lamp in history: Luxo Jr., from the eponymous Pixar short released in 1986 (it lives on in that company’s title card).

Brick Tamland: I love... carpet. [pause] Brick Tamland: I love... desk. Ron Burgundy: Brick, are you just looking at things in the office and saying that you love them? Brick Tamland: I love lamp. Ron Burgundy: Do you really love the lamp, or are you just saying it because you saw it? Brick Tamland: I love lamp. I love lamp.

do a search for Kelly Dobson and "Blendie". similar type of project, but with a blender as the household object. her project mainly interacts via sound, but Blendie has no less "personality". she has some interesting talks out there on video about her work.

Man: Alright, fridge, I'm gonna get me some Coke and sausages.Fridge: Hey scale, how's he been doing on that diet?Scale: Pretty bad, hasn't lost any weight in a week.Fridge: Okay, dude, no coke and sausages for you! Have this salad and water instead!Man: Dammit, let me have my...Fridge: NoMan: You listen here, you better give me my...Fridge: Eat this... or starve!

The closest cultural reference for Pinokio is probably the only famous anthropomorphic desk lamp in history: Luxo Jr., from the eponymous Pixar short released in 1986 (it lives on in that company’s title card).

Man: Alright, fridge, I'm gonna get me some Coke and sausages.Fridge: Hey scale, how's he been doing on that diet?Scale: Pretty bad, hasn't lost any weight in a week.Fridge: Okay, dude, no coke and sausages for you! Have this salad and water instead!Man: Dammit, let me have my...Fridge: NoMan: You listen here, you better give me my...Fridge: Eat this... or starve!

Heh, appliances will soon have as much personality as they do in Fallout 3.

I think it's more likely that Pixar would pick up two of these. One for their studio, and one for Lasseter's office. I don't know if the heads at Disney would take offense, but it would be disappointing if they did. But, with how available this style of lamp is, I'd be really surprised to see it happen.

This is lovely. I am seized with a crazy desire to make one myself. My kids would go mad over it. Must resist. Must resist.

Hmm raspberry pi, servos, open source code hmm. If someone could create a parts and shopping list and step-by-step and get it under £100, I'd be VERY tempted. Must resist ...

A couple of Arduino UNO boards, servos, and miscellaneous hardware to articulate the lamp would run about $150. Have to see what it takes to support the facial recognition but substituting other sensors (IR, ultrasonic range-finders, etc.) would probably add another $50 to $100 depending on the sensors.

Man: Alright, fridge, I'm gonna get me some Coke and sausages.Fridge: Hey scale, how's he been doing on that diet?Scale: Pretty bad, hasn't lost any weight in a week.Fridge: Okay, dude, no coke and sausages for you! Have this salad and water instead!Man: Dammit, let me have my...Fridge: NoMan: You listen here, you better give me my...Fridge: Eat this... or starve!

Hey, if I can prevent it from giving me things I actively dislike and it makes the salad for me then I'm all for this, would take the trouble of working out what to have for dinner. Assuming it knows what's inside, you could also have it text you to pick up food on the way home from work if your running out or tell you what to toss if it's going bad

Man: Alright, fridge, I'm gonna get me some Coke and sausages.Fridge: Hey scale, how's he been doing on that diet?Scale: Pretty bad, hasn't lost any weight in a week.Fridge: Okay, dude, no coke and sausages for you! Have this salad and water instead!Man: Dammit, let me have my...Fridge: NoMan: You listen here, you better give me my...Fridge: Eat this... or starve!

Hey, if I can prevent it from giving me things I actively dislike and it makes the salad for me then I'm all for this, would take the trouble of working out what to have for dinner. Assuming it knows what's inside, you could also have it text you to pick up food on the way home from work if your running out or tell you what to toss if it's going bad

Sounds good to me. Better to let it in on the budget and allow it to order the food for delivery. That way you don't have to go to the trouble and it is always "magically" stocked.

Man: Alright, fridge, I'm gonna get me some Coke and sausages.Fridge: Hey scale, how's he been doing on that diet?Scale: Pretty bad, hasn't lost any weight in a week.Fridge: Okay, dude, no coke and sausages for you! Have this salad and water instead!Man: Dammit, let me have my...Fridge: NoMan: You listen here, you better give me my...Fridge: Eat this... or starve!

Hey, if I can prevent it from giving me things I actively dislike and it makes the salad for me then I'm all for this, would take the trouble of working out what to have for dinner. Assuming it knows what's inside, you could also have it text you to pick up food on the way home from work if your running out or tell you what to toss if it's going bad

It's a fridge, not a chef. Besides, I hope it's safe to assume that you didn't buy anything to put in your fridge that you hate. Whether it's as yummy as junk food however...

This is neat. I just hope they don't decide to interact when I'm trying to sleep. I already have pets that do that.